Believe me, I was close. By the time pilot Kirby Chambliss said it was time to fly back to Boeing Field, my stomach was churning pretty bad. But I kept my lunch down as we puttered at 180 mph away from Carnation and the Snoqualmie River valley, over which we did our flight aerobatics Thursday in a Zivco Edge 540T two-seater airplane.

Chambliss, 52, is a multiple world champion in aerobatics and perhaps is best-known for racing in the Red Bull Air Race World Series. You may have seen him — many of those races were televised for a while — speeding his Red Bull Zivco Edge 540 single-seat airplane through courses lined with inflatable-pylon gates.

Now he mainly performs aerobatics for the Red Bull Air Force, and is performing this weekend at Seattle’s Seafair. As part of the festivities, some members of the local media got the chance to ride along Thursday. I was one of them (see video below).

For some reason, I wasn’t particularly nervous. That is, I wasn’t particularly nervous until the guy who rode before me returned with a bag full of barf. And when I finally zipped up my flight suit, strapped on a parachute, climbed into the front seat of the Zivco, strapped myself in with two harnesses, slipped on my headset and was told not to touch the black handle to my left (it jettisons the window canopy) — well, that’s when things got real.

The Zivco Edge 540T is far more agile than a Blue Angel fighter jet. (Nick Eaton/seattlepi.com)

Chambliss climbed into the pilot’s seat behind me and we were ready for our departure, at about 4:30 p.m. The Boeing Field control tower gave us clearance to take off, and we sped down Runway 31R and up into the sky. Because Seattle is such a busy city for air traffic — especially during Seafair — we had to fly through the traffic pattern out toward Carnation before beginning any aerobatics.

It took less than 10 minutes to get there, but it was plenty of time for my nerves to kick in. I was having second thoughts. I decided I only wanted to do gentle stunts, like large loops and fast dives, and I’m pretty sure I said something over the headset radio to that effect. Chambliss was probably back there grinning — he knew what I was getting into.

We didn’t do the gentle stuff.

Before he executed our first stunt, Chambliss rolled the plane upside-down so I could check the tightness of my harness. Whoa! That was like a roller coaster in itself, and it was the gentlest thing we would do that afternoon. Then, he explained to me the stunt we were about to do. Something about diving to pick up speed, pulling up, rolling over the left wing, flipping end-over-end and then going into a flat spin. The cabin would get a bit smokey, he said, as the aerobatic smoke leeched inside — we’d essentially be stopped in mid-air.

It’s not something you generally think a plane could do.

Honestly, I don’t even know what happened in that first stunt. It was all a blur. The sky was a blur, the ground was a blur, the instrument panel was a blur, my thoughts were a blur. I remember being slammed around the cockpit. I remember diving straight down. I remember Chambliss talking to me, reminding me to look straight ahead. When it was over, it seemed more terrifying than fun.

Pilot Kirby Chambliss, in rear seat, and seattlepi.com

That was the most intense stunt we would do, Chambliss told me. Good, I thought. I couldn’t take much more of that. But then he explained the next one.

We would dive to pick up speed, then pull straight up into the air at more than 250 mph. Still pointed straight up, the plane would slow down until the wings stalled and we would just hang there, before slipping backward to “fly” tail-first at 90 mph. Then he’d push the nose forward and we’d dive.

Yep, I remember more of that stunt. Chambliss recommended I watch a piece of string hanging off the left wing, trailing in the wind. As we climbed and the plane slowed and slowed, I watched that string until it floated the opposite direction. We were then falling backward. But other than the visual cues, it was hard to tell — it was hard to tell anything we were doing up there.

After we pulled out of that aerobatic, I needed a minute or two to catch my breath. But it wasn’t long until we prepared for our next and final stunt: a six-G, high-speed banking turn. At six G’s, you feel six times the force of gravity, and if you don’t know how to prevent it, you’ll experience some tunnel vision as the blood drains out of your head. Indeed, that’s what happened — though the forces were so intense that I ended up looking down at my lap through the entire turn.

Intense. And in those Red Bull Air Races, pilots like Chambliss are pulling 12 G’s.

That's not where the ground is supposed to be. (Team Chambliss/Red Bull Photo Files)

Three stunts down and Chambliss said he had one more to show me. I said I needed to recollect myself for a sec. After about a minute, though, he suggested we head back to the airport so I didn’t get sick. Good idea, I thought. I was ready to be back on the ground.

A few minutes later, after soaring back over Lake Washington and past downtown Seattle, we came in for our landing. Land, sweet land. Back on the tarmac, it began to all sink in: I had just experienced something amazing, something incredible, something terrifying and something very freeing.

Up there in the air, you are not constrained to two dimensions like we are on the ground. There’s a free range of motion up there — you can do almost anything, provided you don’t get too low to the ground. As Chambliss explained to me after the flight, there isn’t anything you can imagine that he can’t do in that Zivco Edge. It’s far, far more agile than fighter jets like the Blue Angels.

Of course, the aerobatics we did Thursday likely seemed gentle to Chambliss. But they were intense for me. I felt both excitement and pity for the guy who went up with Chambliss after me — who happened to be local rapper Macklemore.

Chambliss said I did really well on the flight. The Red Bull crew on the ground were impressed I didn’t vomit. I was proud, too — though they didn’t know how close I got.

Wow.

Here’s a video of me in the cockpit during the stunts. Footage is courtesy of Red Bull.